13 March 2007

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

CONTEMPORARY ART LESSONS IN NAVARRA

From the eighteenth-century tradition to nineteenth-century realism: painting in the nineteenth century

Dr. Ignacio J. Urricelqui Pacho.
Chairof Navarrese Heritage and Art

The lectureproposed an analysis of the painting produced from the end of the 18th century to the last quarter of the 19th century, delving into the movements and trends that had the greatest presence in Navarre. During the last third of the seventeenth century, when the academic language promoted by the Royal Academy of Fine and Noble Arts of San Fernando, the Kingdom witnessed some interesting works that served to renew, albeit partially, the local artistic environment. Rococo, with its elegance and colourfulness of form and colour, was present in paintings such as those by Pedro Antonio de Rada in Pamplona and, even more so, by Luis Paret y Alcázar in Viana. The active presence of the Corellan Antonio González at Court, who for some years headed the drawing section of the San Fernando Academy, did not encourage painting activity in his native land.

While local painters such as Diego Díaz del Valle of Cascantino were using a retarded language in paintings of discreet quality, the Diputación del Reino and prominent members of the local nobility were consuming a select range of paintings commissioned by the Court at the turn of the century. The Marquis of San Adrián was portrayed by Francisco de Goya in 1804, while the Diputación would demand interesting examples of royal portraiture during the first third of the century, with works by Goya himself, Madrazo, Esquivel and Vicente López. The Church also contributed to this through outstanding paintings such as the portrait of Bishop Leonardo Severo Andriani, signed by Vicente López around 1848. Private clients, particularly the nobility, demanded paintings, not only portraits but also landscapes and genre scenes by foreign firms. More discreet in this respect was the clientele of local councils, which generally opted for local artists of limited quality.
 

Francisco de Goya, Portrait of the Marquis of San Adrián, 1804. Museum of Navarre.

In the Romantic period, a municipal drawing academy was set up in Pamplona which, under the direction of the Soria-born Miguel Sanz y Benito, constituted a point of reference letterin the local artistic training. However, the lack of institutional involvement in the trainingof artists, of a solid clientele and of actively committed critics limited the effects of this process. This statusexplains why, when in 1860 the Diputación del Reino decided to undertake the decoration of the Throne Room of the provincial palace, taking advantage of the advertisementde visitof Queen Isabella II for the following year, the pictorial commissions fell to foreign artists - Alejandro Ferrant, Joaquín Espalter, Francisco Aznar, Francisco Mendoza and Constancio Corona - and only one artist from Navarre, Miguel Martín, was commissioned to do so. Only one artist from Navarre, Miguel Martín Azparren, took part in project, painting the ceiling in a Nazarene language, while the other painters were responsible for the historical scenes and the gallery of portraits of the kings of Navarre that completed the programme, all inspired by the past glories of the ancient Kingdom of Navarre. History painting, a genre that dominated the official painting scene in Spain during the second half of the century, was not, however, particularly popular in Navarre.

Miguel Martín Azparren, Paintings on the ceiling of the Throne Room (detail), 1860. Provincial Palace

In the last quarter of the century, coinciding with a greater boom in pictorial realism and a greater trivialisation of the subjects treated, Navarre witnessed the presence of several painters interested in depicting everyday themes with a realistic character and in the anecdotal nature of the scenes. Painters such as Eduardo Carceller, Inocencio García Asarta and Nicolás Esparza worked in this direction, renewing the panorama of local painting and updating it to a certain extent in relation to the national scene.

Salustiano Asenjo, Portrait of Pablo Sarasate, 1884. Pamplona City Council